CaltechAUTHORS
Published September 28, 2017 | Version Supplemental Material + Published
Journal Article Open

Lightning NO_x Emissions: Reconciling Measured and Modeled Estimates With Updated NO_x Chemistry

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon University of California, Berkeley
  • 2. ROR icon University of Colorado Boulder
  • 3. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 4. ROR icon University of New Hampshire
  • 5. ROR icon Langley Research Center
  • 6. ROR icon Earth System Research Laboratory
  • 7. ROR icon Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences
  • 8. ROR icon Ames Research Center
  • 9. ROR icon Colorado State University

Abstract

Lightning is one of the most important sources of upper tropospheric NO_x; however, there is a large spread in estimates of the global emission rates (2–8 Tg N yr^(−1)). We combine upper tropospheric in situ observations from the Deep Convective Clouds and Chemistry (DC3) experiment and global satellite-retrieved NO_2 tropospheric column densities to constrain mean lightning NO_x (LNO_x) emissions per flash. Insights from DC3 indicate that the NO_x lifetime is ~3 h in the region of outflow of thunderstorms, mainly due to production of methyl peroxy nitrate and alkyl and multifunctional nitrates. The lifetime then increases farther downwind from the region of outflow. Reinterpreting previous analyses using the 3 h lifetime reduces the spread among various methods that have been used to calculate mean LNO_x emissions per flash and indicates a global LNO_x emission rate of ~9 Tg N yr^(−1), a flux larger than the high end of recent estimates.

Additional Information

© 2017 American Geophysical Union. Received 2 JUN 2017; Accepted 29 AUG 2017; Accepted article online 5 SEP 2017; Published online 18 SEP 2017. Data used are available at https://doi:10.5067/Aircraft/DC3/DC8/Aerosol-TraceGas (DC3), https://mirador.gsfc.nasa.gov/ (NASA SP), http://www.temis.nl/airpollution/no2.html (DOMINO), and https://doi.org/10.6078/D10P4P (GEOS-Chem). Relevant analysis code is hosted at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.801885. B. A. N. was supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under grant DGE 1106400. J. L. L. was supported by the NASA ESS Fellowship NNX14AK89H. B. A. N., P. J. W., and R. C. C. acknowledge funding support from NASA (NNX12AB79G). J. D. C. and P. O. W. acknowledge funding support from NASA (NNX12AC06G and NNX14AP46G). J. D. and E. S. acknowledge funding from NASA (NNX12AB80G). This research used the Savio computational cluster resource provided by the Berkeley Research Computing program at the University of California, Berkeley (supported by the UC Berkeley Chancellor, Vice Chancellor of Research, and Office of the CIO). The authors also want to thank the ground and flight crews of the DC-8 and the DC3 science team.

Attached Files

Published - Nault_et_al-2017-Geophysical_Research_Letters.pdf

Supplemental Material - grl56410-sup-0001-2017GL074436-SI.pdf

Files

grl56410-sup-0001-2017GL074436-SI.pdf

Files (1.9 MB)

Name Size
md5:c02cd0824ad81a7e01691739b87df6b2
1.1 MB Preview Download
md5:4821a9809c5a6bc442e6b6bfa35e83bc
753.5 kB Preview Download

Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
83104
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20171109-104417379

Funding

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
DGE-1106400
NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship
NNX14AK89H
NASA
NNX12AB79G
NASA
NNX12AC06G
NASA
NNX14AP46G
NASA
NNX12AB80G
University of California, Berkeley

Dates

Created
2017-11-09
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2021-11-15
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS)